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There’s Something About the Dungeon Finder

I can’t seem to put my finger on it, but let me explain a few situations.

Situation 1

I queued up for about 40 minutes. I finally enter a group. It’s 4 other people from some leet-ass raiding guild. The way they chat, it’s almost like they’re stoned out of their minds. They’ve been wiping on the third boss of Heroic Throne of the Tides, it would seem. I try with them, we wipe once. I insist that they’re stoned because they keep saying random things in caps, and all of a sudden a vote kick comes up with my mage’s name on it, citing reason: “alsdkjfasf.” I get kicked out, and left to queue up again for 40 minutes.

Huh.

Situation 2

I queued up for a Heroic Blackrock Caverns, and joined a group that’s been wiping on Corla, the laser-beam boss. We wiped a few more times, and the paladin tank left. We queued up and got another tank, and downed her. We started wiping on the Karsh, the boss in the forge, and the tank left. We queued up, and the next tank we got is the tank that just left. Everyone lol’s, and the tank leaves again. We queued up again, waiting for about 20 minutes, and the tank that came in was the first tank we had when we were wiping on Corla. We manage to one-shot the rest of the dungeon, and the Hourglass caster trinket dropped from the last boss. Tank rolled need on it, won, and left.

Umm.

Situation 3

I queued up for 45 minutes, and got into a Stonecore group. They’re a group of 4 from the same realm. They haven’t even downed the first boss, but as soon as I come in, they already give up and dissolve the entire group so they can re-queue on their own. I have to queue again for myself, 45 minutes worth.

Umm.

Situation 4

Today, I queued for 50 minutes and got into a Vortex Pinnacle group. They’ve been wiping on Altairus, the dragon boss with the cyclones. We wiped once, and one of the DPS tells me to stop failing on cyclones. I took less damage than him that fight, and used slow fall every time. I don’t even bother trying to defend myself, because the next wipe, I’m the only one alive for most of the fight. That shut him up. He dropped group with the other DPS, and instantly got replacements. We one-shot the rest of the bosses without incident.

HA!

Hard Heroics are Hard

The moral of today’s lesson is to be persistent and tenacious in your random dungeon exploits. It’s a lot more difficult this time around, especially with the gear reset, so you just have to be patient, and find ways to maximize your situation. Long queue times? Go gather while waiting, or grind out mats for that craftable upgrade. Hell, minimize the game and go play something else while you wait.

Better yet, go find a good guild or instancing group on your server who are willing to learn with you. Cuts off the hassle mentioned in the previous paragraphs above.

And for Light’s sake, don’t drop group if you’re making progress on learning the boss fights. Once you learn it the first time, the next ones get easier. If you’re always dropping, you’re never learning.

13 thoughts on “There’s Something About the Dungeon Finder”

Eh, I’m a masochist, what can I say? Even so, the process of learning these bosses definitely have a raid-like feel to them. Learning the fights as you go, gradually getting better, and then having the satisfaction of being able to kill them. It makes it worth it in the end, if it happens. If it doesn’t, then it feels bad, obviously.

I have opted to stay guild only for Heroics for the most part. Even when it 4 of us, just one person can ruin the experience. You are right, Heroics are hard… and well people that have the gear seem to have no patience.

There seems to be a lot of pain and suffering when it comes to PuGs. I don’t know what it is, when Cata first came out I got nothing but absolutely outstanding PuGs who communicated, explained tactics to anyone who was unsure and didn’t whine if there was a wipe (unsurprisingly there were few because of communication and general good attitude).

Lately, however, PuGs have become something of a serious chore. I’m currently on a three hour time zone difference from the rest of my guildies as work has dragged me away from home again so I rarely get to be online at the same time as my guild mates. Moreover, due to the limited time I have free, queueing 45+ minutes to board the fail train is more than I can spare. Don’t get me wrong, sure we’ll wipe and get stuck etc etc but that’s not why it’s a fail train – it’s a fail because you get self righteous arses who believe themselves to be vastly superior to the rest of the group, blame wipes on everyone else but don’t hold themselves accountable for anything and are generally impatient apes.

Why, after barely a month of Cata being out, has all the good will evaporated so soon? What has happened to all those awesome people who were Pugging at the start? I suspect most of them, being good players and know how to communicate, have geared up and moved onto raiding (with the exception of the Daily HC) and no longer wish to subject themselves to the nightmare that many a PuG devolve into any more than they truly have to.

I type this in the full knowledge that by stating that most the good players have ‘moved on’ that I am intimating that I am not a good player. TBH I would probably class myself as an OK player if I’m candid. I know my class, I know my spec, I’m am (slowly) shaking the bad habits I acquired in Wrath (I know when I’ve done something wrong, it’s just preventing those knee jerk reactions to situations) and I’m still learning many of the heroic strategies with many printed guides and sticky notes on my screen.

What you say about being persistent and tenacious is extremely valid because unless I persist I won’t shake those bad habits and I won’t learn the new tactics – but by god man, people in HC PuGs make that process about 100 times harder than it needs to be. The concept that if you take the time to communicate with people and impart knowledge where necessary then the run will go much smoother seems to be a lost and alien concept to so many people.

I think that was longer than my actual post, and I read every single word of it. Great comment.

Asses in pugs are always a possibility, but I’ve also had a bunch of people who are also patiently going through the motions, and are willing to talk it out with the group, giving tweet-length reminders before pulling. For someone who’s doing a bunch of these dungeons for the first time in Heroic, they’re always a good help.

I think Fox Van Allen of WoWInsider touched upon this recently, and I agree to a large extent.

If you leveled fast enough, the people you’d hit in the LFD tool were only the other people dedicated/crazy enough to blast to 85, and generally (not always) they were the more skilled folks who had done all sorts of reading up on Cataclysm beforehand. As the players who take more time to reach 85 start hitting the LFD, the numbers of less skilled, less patient players in the LFD pool increases, so you’re more likely to hit a bad group out of sheer numbers.

I think Runzwithfire is also partly correct with his comment about the folks who originally hit the heroics outgearing them and not running anymore. I have an 85 Holy Paladin with an ilvl of 350. There’s very little in Heroic dungeons for me at this point, as I don’t need the JP, the loot nor the rep. Sure, the 70 VP a day is useful, but even then it’d be far more efficient to raid for the majority of my VP, and with the weekly VP cap you could do all the 25 man raids and never have to run a heroic again (though we might be a bit early for that yet for most raids).

I’m glad you liked the comment guys; I did worry it was kind of novel dumped in Krizzy’s comment section lol. Sadly the only thing I can think of is to be the kind of player I would like to meet in a LFD group and hope the idea of being nice and the ‘good play’ that results from being in a nice group catches on. Another blog I read a while ago (I forget which one but it was linked in WoW Insiders recent LFD article I thing) also looks at ways Blizzard can improve the LFD tool and they’re some interesting ideas. Problem is that they would be open to abuse/trolls – it’d be very difficult to moderate 12 million people and how they responsibly use the tools given to them.

Frost, I know the pain you went through all too well. Having had the same things happen to me, I’ve also been kicked out of dungeons by immature obvious 13 year olds that cannot access a situation to save it’s real life, for simply being a death knight. Ramblings before I even open my mouth such as “Oh god a death knight dps, time to carry him”, “Death knight has no cc = fail” “Stop queueing heroics death knight, you cant even dps”. This is the first thing I’ve seen when entering an instance, before even typing anything or starting to clear trash. This happened a few times and I even got kicked out of the group as soon as they were able. The sad thing is the other party members actually agreed with the crap-talker.

I have no problem helping out on CCing and assisting parties, chains of ice has alot of benefits, Hungering cold has saved my group numerous times due to bad pulls, being able to interupt every 10 seconds off the global cooldown without using any resources, a handy long range silence and death grip are useful tools for pulling casters away from either being next to a cc, or into a group aoe situation. Not to mention I top the dps charts 90% of the time in Pugs, I dont stand in void zones, I know the fights or quickly learn them, and Death Knight dps are plate-wearing, defensive cooldown, damage soakers as well (healers should love them).

All of this yet the very fact that I am a death knight gets me kicked out of a group and I have to wait another 45+ minutes in the LFD queue. I 100% agree with sticking to guild runs, but sometimes one has no choice but to PUG or patiently wait until a premade comes along. (I’m from a very low-pop alliance realm, so it’s hard to find alot of decent groups. Not to mention the fact that there are so many smaller guilds around, competing to recruit people.

Nicole Campos, from We Love Fine, a really neat online t-shirt seller, approached me with a very awesome and very cute design: a steampunk My Melody. The lovely rabbit from Sanrio ditches her usual pink hood and replaces it with a super-funky aviator cap, complete with goggles and utility belt. An awesome finishing touch features […]